Brunch are back with a brand new full-length record, The Golden Age, and we’re lucky enough to be able to share a stream before the November 15th release. Recorded across two sessions with Seb Gilmore of Public Pool Recordings, the album develops the Brunch style further, pushing the limits of rock in as many directions as humanly possible. “Delicate indie-rock songs explode into hard-edged rockers,” the band describe. “Big, bloated rock monsters rub shoulders with rapid-fire rock workouts. The genre is ROCK.”

Opener ‘Get It’ sets the tone, wistful guitar emerging from an ambient fog before the rest of the instruments crash into the scene too, blowing away the cobwebs with sheer noise and weight. However, this being Brunch, the song is no simple rise from quiet to loud, nor an straightforward ebb and flow between the two. Rather, the song maintains an erratic air, its spirit cycling from reflection to confusion to joy and back, as well as a kind of unhinged release too.

Just as the sound remains impossible to pin down, so too does the lyrical tone, setting ironic playfulness next to naked emotion and leaving it to the listener to untangle the ultimate meaning. “I’m uncomfortable,” begins the song of the same name in a prime example, “and I don’t know why. Is it indigestion? Or cos my mother died?” The moment is not dwelt upon as some cheap punch, rather just one line among many from a decidedly twenty-first century perspective, so overwhelmed with information that even the most immediate sensations are second guessed

‘Life Story’ is another good example, a dissatisfied track about the flow of time laughing at your ideas of success and happiness, those dreams you used to imagine were achievable targets. The lyrics certainly dive into some amusing self-deprecation, but this narrative is muddied by a wider anger too, a cynicism pointed outwards, as though in the end it is perhaps not some individual failing to feel discontented but rather the cultural logic of our time.

“Although I hate everything I’ve done
I will keep on trying out
That’s got to be worth something
in this economy.

I took a course on how to monetise my dreams
invest my savings, diversified my streams.
But now I’m thirty-three
now I’m forty-three
now I’m fifty-three
now I’m ninety-three

The discrepancy between between the future previously imagined and the future that has arrived is the one constant on The Golden Age. Indeed, the title speaks to the sentiment, evoking a period of prosperity and happiness that can only truly exist as some imminent ideal certain to arrive at any moment. If the nineties told us that we could be whatever we wanted to be, then the contemporary moment is the dawning reality of the lie, the realisation that the entire system hinges upon a perpetually deferred gratification—there’s always another product to buy, car to drive, course to take, and satisfaction remains just outside of arm’s length, a mirage on the horizon that will get closer, surely, any day now.

The problem, of course, is that during all this waiting, time’s doing its thing. Starting as downer dream pop before seguing into a sloppy classic punk rock sound, ’30 Year Old Man’ takes this head on, staring into the chasm between what life could be and what it actually is. Trying to plug the void with get-quick-rich schemes and massive motors and supermarket clothes, only for the space to keep sucking everything into its maw. You start to wonder, what if this whole thing has been some kind of scam?

The song is immediately followed by ‘300 Year Old Man’, a track with its body torn away to leave a cold and naked skeleton, gnashing its teeth in the dark. “I didn’t want to get old,” it sings, “but there ain’t nothing I can do about it.” But there is something that can breathe life into this old boy yet, the sound rising into a furious rattle as it lists the company cars and coffee machines and huge guitars that failed to add up to an answer. The realisation might be its own golden age, one arriving too late and in no way the shade you imagined but arriving nonetheless. Because this whole thing has been lie, so what are we going to do about it now?

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“The album takes the formula of Stewart’s previous releases and stretches it panoramic, bedroom pop on a mountainous scale, a departure from his norms in all the right ways. The band build dense layers of guitar which, paired with rumbling bass and crashing drums, create something imposing, a monolith rising through the fog.”

The great news is that the full album has now been released, and the promise saw at the start of the year has been realised. Eight songs of dense indie rock which borrow as much from the cathartic peaks of post-rock as they do from the slow and spectral sound we’ve come to associate with Stewart. We begin with ‘In Linear’, with it’s slow and considered start, all open spaces and dark winding guitars and Stewart’s signature vocals. The “choruses” spike with heavier instrumentation, our first taste of the album’s post-rock tendencies, while the gentler verses are full of lines like:

“You always cover the receiver with your hand
why don’t you want them to listen
why don’t you want them to understand?”

‘LAFK’ opens with almost martial drumbeat before the advent of inky and slinky guitars, eventually blooming into a track which fuses a sheer rock passion with emotive vocals and reflective air of something else entirely, bringing to mind earlier Winterlseep releases and particular the music of Brian Borcherdt’s Dusted project. The song is punctuated by moments of almost pure silence, where the only sound is the receding reverb of the previous burst of instrumentation, a sound you can’t be sure doesn’t exist only in your inner ear. Eventually things build to a pinnacle, ending in a furious cacophony of pounding percussion and squealing guitars. ‘Careful Creators’ gathers itself and then comes crashing to life, the vocals sad and oddly serene, floating in during the intervals between the noise (“To be alive is to be alone”).

The title track is a patient and vaguely ominous song, guitars rolling in like surf on an abandoned shore, while ‘x’ shakes things up with its shimmering, shifting ambience, like ice crystals gliding through the great black expanse of outer space. A discordant clang announces the arrival of ‘Temporary Widow’, which has shades of Explosions in the Sky, epic crests of feedback and pummelled drums surrounding the soaring vocals like a big staticky storm cloud. ‘Concrete Plans’ marches out of a drone that sounds like some kind of cosmic wind, the drums holding a rhythm that feels almost heavy rock.

“Under someone else’s concrete plans
you’re not even a name
or the print of your own hand
you become so dependent”

Finale ‘Words’ is epic and reverberating, stretching over the nine minute mark and enduring all manner of tumult in its duration. It converges into perhaps the heaviest maelstrom on the entire album, before descending into a lull at the very finish, just sparse guitar and Stewart’s vocals, like the strange glowing hush in aftermath of a tempest.

“It’s alright if your words
don’t come as easily to you
if everything is overheard
maybe they’re not supposed to”

This is an album that has it all. It’s pretty easy to turn to cloying metaphors to describe the sense of vast space it conjures, the poignancy or Stewart’s vocals, the pure tangible noise that the band can summon. It takes a little bit of everything and melts them down into something that’s quite unique. Something that is quite distinctly Summering.

You can get Summering now via the Summering Bandcamp page.

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Vagabon is the recording project of Lætitia Tamko who, along with Eva Lawitts (bass) and Elise Okusami (drums), makes a robust blend of indie rock and bedroom pop. Persian Garden, which came out last November, is a mini-album centred on the departure (and continued absence) of a friend or loved one which pushes and pulls in all directions, as if straining against some emotional shackles (self-imposed or otherwise). Opener ‘Cold Apartment Floors’ is a good example. The lyrics and instrumentation conjure a disconsolate air for the most part, but brimming beneath is a sense of something else, a certain charge in the guitar and Tamko’s vocals which add another dimension, hinting at a greater depth to the whole situation:

“I know its my fault, I gave up on everything
and I see you happy, it warms my heart.

And we said its not the end but she wore that white dress
and I changed, we are not the same but i thought you’d wait

So we sit on my cold apartment floor where we thought we’d stay in love”

From here the album accelerates with ‘Shadows’, an urgent track with ramshackle banjo and steel guitar supporting lyrics centred on wandering and movement (Vagabon is a meaningful moniker). The song has the breathless feel of constant action, Tamko stealing gasps between lines as she lets her words stream out in a desperate rush. ‘Vermont II’ deals with the longing that comes with a change of heart (“Freddy come back I know you love where you are /
but I think I changed my mind”) while ‘Heroine’ traces addiction through small towns and cold winters, detailing the disappointment of relapsing into old habits (“winter will never be the same now that you’re back to your old ways”), the guitars rising into squally chaos and forcing Tamko to wail behind the noise. ‘Vermont’ squirms in a different direction: backwards. Here the secondary character (Freddy?) is packing for Vermont, allowing us to see the narrator pre-mind change, wounded by deceit but trying to heal, if only to prove a point. ‘Sharks’ picks up from this point, capturing the slump in self-worth that succeeds lies and rows.

“Run and tell everybody that Laetitia is
a small fish

I’m just a small fish.

And you’re a shark that hates everything.
You’re a shark that eats every fish”

Vagabon make the special kind of sad and confused music that has the opposite effect on the listener. The sort of music that makes you feel part of something, a big sad and confused gang spread out all over the world, connected by shared experience and a sneaky feeling that life is worth living.

You can buy Persian Garden now from the Vagabon Bandcamp page. It was out on cassette via Miscreant Records but we’re waaaay too late for that. Check Ebay, maybe?

P.S. Lætitia plays guitar in Real Life Buildings, who we like very much.

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